Report: Tsarnaev admits that he and brother were headed to New York; Update: To … party? Update: CIA wanted Tsarnaev on terror watch list a year ago

posted at 4:01 pm on April 24, 2013 by Allahpundit

Sources told CBS News on Tuesday that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, has admitted that he and his brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, were behind the bombings and that they had plans to go to Manhattan.

Investigators said the suspects may have set out for New York City if not for the death of Tamerlan and the eventual capture of Dzhokhar.

Authorities gained new insight about what the brothers may have been planning next after speaking with a carjacking victim who police said was held hostage by the suspects Thursday night, CBS News reported.

They got caught late last Thursday and already had at least one more pressure-cooker bomb prepared. Had they made it to Manhattan, they would have been there in time for weekend crowds in Times Square on Friday and Saturday nights. If you’re looking to maximize casualties, there’s no better time and place; Faizal Shahad also chose Saturday night in Times Square for his attempted car-bombing in 2010. It’s still strange to me, though, that they hung around Boston after the marathon bombing when they knew people were looking for them there rather than head straight for NYC. Their M.O. was an odd mix of planning and spontaneity: They made sure the bombs were built correctly, but beyond that there appears to have been no Plan B. No car ready to roll or train tickets purchased to take them out of town, no money stashed away for expenses during life as fugitives. Makes me wonder if the plan initially was to be suicide bombers and that got changed late in the game for some reason, either because they didn’t want to go through with it or because they decided at the eleventh hour that they could hit more targets later by remaining alive.

The surviving suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings has told investigators that he and his brother were headed for New York to party after the attack, the New York police commissioner said Wednesday.

A man authorities say was carjacked by the brothers has told investigators that he heard one of them say “Manhattan,” Commissioner Ray Kelly told reporters. But he said investigators don’t believe the brothers were headed to New York to “continue what they were doing.”

It’s amazing that Dzhokhar found time amid his busy party schedule to murder people. Did these two morons really not understand that they were destined to be the focus of a nationwide manhunt? What did they think was going to happen when they went clubbing in NYC?

Update: What did the CIA know, or think they knew, about Tamerlan Tsarnaev in late 2011?

The CIA asked the main U.S. counterterrorism agency to add the name of one of the suspected Boston Marathon bombers to a watch list more than a year before the attack, according to U.S. officials.

The agency took the step after Russian authorities contacted officials there in the fall of 2011 and raised concerns that Tamerlan Tsarnaev — who was killed last week in a confrontation with police — was seen as an increasingly radical Islamist and could be planning to travel overseas. The CIA requested that his name be put on a database maintained by the National Counterterrorism Center…

The CIA’s request came months after the FBI had closed a preliminary inquiry into Tsarnaev after getting a similar inquiry about him from Russian state security, according to officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter.

Law enforcement officials said that the request to the FBI in 2011 originated from fears by the Russian government that Tamerlan was a threat to Russia and would commit a terrorist act in Russia — not the United States. The request came from Russian federal police to the U.S. Embassy in Moscow.

We already knew that his name had been entered into the TIDE terror database, but what I didn’t know until now is that the CIA had reason to want him in there even after the FBI had concluded its investigation. Was the CIA simply being cautious by tossing his name into the pile because the Russians had flagged it or did something new come to light after the FBI stopped looking at him?